The mont Kieran turned his back, I knew what I had to do. I had less than twenty-four hours to do the impossible, unite the ferals. Not just a few. All of them.
And if I failed, the girl who died would remain nothing more than a footnote, another forgotten body in a system built to crush people like us.
The weight of it pressed heavily on my chest as I left the courtyard. My footsteps were slow, mind racing with thoughts. I was still clutching the torn piece of fabric in my pocket like it was a lifeline.
In class, I couldn’t concentrate. Words blurred on the board, and I caught none of the lectures. My mind was consud by Kieran’s challenge. By the vision of that girl’s blood. By the broken silence that still rang in my ears.
When the final bell rang, I darted out of class like soone lit fire beneath my feet.
Adrian was waiting outside near the lockers. As usual, arms folded, face unreadable.
"You ready for cleaning?" he asked.
I hesitated. "Adrian, I need a favor."
His brow lifted, skeptical. "You? Asking for favors now?"
"Please," I said, urgency creeping into my voice. "I can’t do cleaning duty this ti. Not today."
"What’s so important?"
"I can’t explain. Not yet. But please, just cover for this once."
He studied for a mont, then sighed dramatically. "Fine. But you owe ."
"Thank you," I said, already turning away. "Seriously."
I caught up with my friends, Callum, Elise, and Felix, on the path back to the dorms. The sun was beginning to dip behind the buildings, casting golden shadows on the gravel trail. For a second, I hesitated. How do you begin a rebellion with just your voice?
But I couldn’t hesitate now.
"I need to talk to you guys," I said.
They looked at , alert now. The desperation in my voice must have caught their attention.
"I found a murdered girl yesterday. A feral. Tortured. Hung in the cafeteria like she was nothing."
Callum stiffened beside . Elise gasped. Felix’s jaw clenched.
"The worst part?" I continued. "Astrid didn’t care. She acted like it was normal. She said the academy wouldn’t do anything because killing isn’t against the rules. And because she was a feral, it didn’t matter."
They stayed quiet, and the silence only made my blood boil more.
"We’re going to keep dying," I said, "if we don’t speak up now. If we don’t fight for ourselves. They’ve beaten us down for so long we’ve forgotten we have a voice."
Callum looked down, his arms folded tightly across his chest. "What’s the point?" he muttered. "We are the weakest. That will never change."
I turned to him. "That’s exactly what they want us to believe. They’ve made us believe we’re powerless, that our pain doesn’t matter. But what if we proved them wrong? What if just this once, we stood together?"
Callum didn’t respond. His face had gone blank, unreadable. I recognized that expression. It was the sa mask I used to wear when I’d stopped hoping for anything better.
I turned to Elise. Her hands were wringing her sleeves, nervous.
"Elise?"
"I... I don’t know," she murmured. "What good would it do? If we speak up, they’ll just punish us. Or worse."
"But we’ll die either way," I said. "At least this way, we go down with our dignity. At least we try."
She didn’t answer. But she didn’t walk away either.
And then Felix stepped forward, eyes blazing.
"She’s right," he said. "I’m tired of being scared. Tired of watching our friends die and pretending it’s normal. If we don’t speak now, when will we?"
I t his gaze, grateful beyond words.
"Thank you," I whispered.
But I knew one voice wasn’t enough. Not even three. If I was going to prove anything to Kieran, I needed the whole feral dorm united, every last one of us.
And I only had until tomorrow.
By the ti we reached the dorm, sothing was off.
Too many people stood huddled near the entrance, and the stench hit first, rancid, foul, like rotting food and sewage had been mixed together and left under the sun.
"What the hell?" Felix muttered, rushing forward.
We pushed our way through the murmuring crowd into the common room and froze.
It was a warzone.
Trash, actual trash, was everywhere. Old food, wrappers, broken trays, torn paper, even what looked like scraps of raw at. Soone had gone out of their way to dump garbage in every corner of the dorm. Chairs were overturned, the couch was stained with sothing sticky, and the whole place reeked so bad I nearly gagged.
"No way this happened on its own," Callum said, covering his nose with his sleeve.
"They trashed us..." Elise whispered, her voice shaking.
The dorm door slamd open behind us, and we all turned.
Silas. Our dorm master
He looked pissed.
His eyes swept over the ss once, then landed on us like lasers.
"Who did this?" he barked.
No one answered. Everyone was still too stunned. We’d just co back from class, who could’ve done it?
"I said, who did this?" he shouted again.
A few of the younger ferals trembled. I noticed one girl looked like she was on the verge of tears.
"We just got here," I said, stepping forward. "None of us—"
"I didn’t ask for excuses," Silas snapped. "I asked for a culprit."
"There is no culprit," Felix growled. "Not from us."
Silas sneered. "Typical. Can’t even take responsibility for your filth. Fine. Forty dorm points gone. Clean it up before tomorrow morning, or you lose more"
Murmurs of protest broke out behind .
"That’s not fair!"
"We didn’t even do this!"
"You can’t keep punishing us when we didn’t—"
Silas raised a hand, and the room went quiet.
"Life’s not fair," he said coldly. "Welco to Lunar Crest."
And with that, he turned and walked out, leaving behind a room full of angry, exhausted, defeated ferals and the stink of injustice.
I stood there for a mont, clenching my fists, feeling the fabric of that torn uniform still in my pocket.
Then I heard it, quiet, hushed voices behind .
"I saw them," soone whispered.
"Yeah, too. I think it was the nobles. I saw a couple of them near the windows while we were in class."
"I swear I saw them drop sothing and—"
I turned sharply, eyes wide.
"What did you just say?" I asked the boy who spoke.
He flinched. "The nobles. I think it was them. They were laughing while they walked away from our dorm. I.... I didn’t think it ant anything."
But it did.
Oh, it ant everything.
Because in that mont, sothing clicked in my head like a gear snapping into place.
This wasn’t just about garbage.
This was about humiliation. Power. The nobles were trying to break us, ruin our points, make sure we stayed at the bottom. They wanted us gone. And they weren’t even hiding it anymore.
And Silas? He didn’t care.
But maybe... maybe this was the mont. The spark I needed.
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